Imagine an employee who has donated a portion of every paycheck for twenty years, but has never been asked to extend their impact through a legacy gift. That gap is easy to close. Workplace giving programs are built around the next pay period or the next volunteer day, while legacy giving (also called planned giving) covers commitments such as bequests and beneficiary designations that a nonprofit receives later.
Corporate partners and nonprofits can work together to bridge this gap. The company brings trusted internal channels and an engaged workforce, and the nonprofit brings mission expertise and planned giving resources. Companies that already build reciprocal alliances with nonprofits are well placed to add legacy giving to the mix.
In this guide, we'll cover how corporate partners and nonprofits can co-market legacy giving to deepen employee engagement and deliver measurable results.
Move Beyond One-Day Giving Events
Corporate philanthropy has long centered on events and annual campaigns. While these moments build short-term awareness, co-marketing legacy giving provides a structured way to create long-term impact through several key strategies.
Align institutional goals: Companies strengthen their corporate cultural impact by giving employees a way to act on long-term values, while nonprofits gain a sustainable funding source that grows with the partnership.
Focus on personal values: Position legacy gifts as an extension of personal values and financial planning rather than a legal task, using plain language to emphasize community impact over technical terms.
Provide supported pathways: Aim to offer employees a clear, supported, and private path to leave a lasting mark on their community.
Before drafting a single message, agree on one sentence both teams will use to describe the offer, such as “a way to plan a gift that supports our community after your career.” Shared language keeps all subsequent pieces consistent across both organizations' channels.
Build the Business Case for Both Partners
Legacy giving partnerships work best when both sides clearly benefit. The four advantages below give program managers language for proposals to executives and boards:
Employee engagement metrics. Offering a way to plan a lasting gift signals that the company supports its employees' long-term values. Companies can track whether satisfaction and retention scores shift among participating employees.
Corporate cultural impact. Philanthropy that reaches beyond volunteer hours builds a shared identity rooted in lasting community betterment.
Brand purpose. Co-marketing lets the company and the nonprofit align their public narratives and present a stable, consistent commitment to community progress.
Built-in continuity. Legacy giving adds a final step to the employee giving programs already in place, such as matching gifts, volunteer grants, and corporate sponsorships. An employee can start as a volunteer, give through payroll, and later include the nonprofit in a long-term plan.
Put these four advantages on a one-page scorecard with a single metric beside each, so executives and nonprofit leaders approve the same measures. That scorecard becomes the baseline for the metric tiers later in this guide.
Align Your Data and Systems
Successful marketing initiatives run on accurate records and compatible systems. Programmatic management gets simpler when both organizations agree on how employee and supporter information moves before any campaign goes live, especially for a topic as personal as estate planning.
Aligning data processes across four key technical areas ensures information flows securely and reliably between systems:
Data append: Run a routine data append to keep contact and employer records up to date. Merge duplicate records first so each person receives one message, then plan on refreshing employer data every 12 to 24 months.
Giving channels: Connect immediate workplace actions, such as a payroll deduction, to conversations about long-term goals. The impact-first updates that work for stewarding payroll donors also create a natural opening for a legacy giving conversation.
Matching gift validation and tracking: Matching gift validation confirms an employee's gift before the employer releases funds, and planned gifts follow a longer timeline. Record each pledged commitment as an expected gift, and add a timing field to the gift handling steps your team already uses to keep pipeline reports accurate.
Donor management integration: Connect the company's corporate social responsibility (CSR) platform with the nonprofit's constituent relationship management (CRM) system so each employee has one consistent record. Automated data pipelines can pass transaction data between donation tools, the CRM, and CSR platforms without manual entry.
Document who owns each record type in a one-page data map. Then test a single record from employee sign-up to CRM entry before launch, because a single test record reveals mismatched fields faster than a planning meeting.
Co-Marketing Legacy Giving Steps
A phased plan gives both partners clear checkpoints when co-marketing legacy giving. Each phase below ends with a deliverable that both teams approve before the next one begins.
Step 1: Align on Goals
Define shared objectives before drafting any external materials. Both the nonprofit and the company should agree on the target audience, key performance indicators (KPIs), and the scope of the co-marketing effort. Securing cross-team buy-in works best when HR, CSR, development staff, and executive sponsors name what they need and when they need it.
Deliverable: A signed scope document with audience, KPIs, and owners.
Step 2: Write 101-Friendly Messaging
Estate planning is personal, so lead with future impact and community building. Develop clear, easy-to-scan materials, such as one-pagers or short educational videos, that break planned giving into simple steps. Organizations can also package short videos, newsletter features, and thank-you inserts for donors.
Deliverable: A starter kit with a one-pager, a short video script, and a frequently asked questions page.
Step 3: Roll Out Internally
Use the trusted environment of the workplace. Share the nonprofit’s mission alongside legacy giving resources in company newsletters, intranet portals, and dedicated Slack or Teams channels.
Deliverable: A content calendar that spaces messages across channels.
Step 4: Steward and Recognize
Build a planned giving donor stewardship plan that both partners own. Some givers prefer to stay anonymous, so a Legacy Society recognition program should offer private and public options.
Deliverable: A recognition menu with an anonymous checkbox and a thank-you timeline.
Be sure to hold a short check-in at the end of each phase to confirm that both partners have approved the deliverable before moving on to the next set of criteria.
Reach Employees Where They Already Engage
Employees pay attention to channels they already use at work, so the strongest tactics fit existing routines. These four options work with channels most companies already have:
Financial wellness seminars. Add planned giving to existing financial planning workshops and invite an estate planning professional to present. Legacy giving then reads as one part of healthy financial management.
Executive sponsorship. Invite leaders to share, if they choose, why they plan their own gifts. A two-minute note in a leadership update is enough, and leadership modeling strengthens corporate cultural impact.
Impact storytelling. Show what a planned gift achieves in 10, 20, or 50 years, and pair each timeframe with one concrete program outcome from the nonprofit.
Champion toolkits. Give employee champions and nonprofit staff the same one-page reference and short conversation scripts. Nonprofit teams already do this well with an internal resource hub that holds talking points and answers in one place.
Pilot one tactic at a time, starting with the best-attended channel. Compare the response with the short-term indicators in the metrics section below.
Answer Three Common Questions Early
Employees and program staff tend to raise the same questions when legacy giving is introduced. Answering them in launch materials keeps the campaign moving.
Here are some common questions you can easily answer with a few simple steps.
“Is planning a gift complicated?” Provide direct links to vetted online estate planning tools from the nonprofit, and add a plain-language one-pager. One clear place to start removes the guesswork.
“How will personal information be handled?” Establish a mutually signed data-sharing agreement, and make sure every donor management integration respects confidentiality. Employees should explicitly opt in to communications, and company-level reports should remain aggregated so that no individual is identified.
“How do we keep momentum after launch?” Turn the campaign into an always-on programmatic feature. Embed legacy giving links in annual benefits enrollment periods and yearly giving campaigns.
Add these answers to the one-pager and the frequently asked questions page. Revisit the list after the first quarter, because real employee questions will refine it.
Track Three Tiers of Metrics
Legacy gifts take years to mature, so leading indicators show whether the partnership is healthy long before commitments arrive. Corporate partners increasingly expect reports that go beyond dollars to include volunteer hours, engagement rates, and survey feedback.
Below are the metrics you can keep track of:
Short-Term Metrics
Short-term metrics measure immediate engagement and initial outreach performance across company channels, such as:
Click-through rates on internal legacy giving emails
Attendance at co-hosted financial wellness and estate planning webinars
Resource downloads from the corporate intranet
Mid-Term Metrics
Mid-term metrics track ongoing interest, data integration progress, and deeper interactions with planned giving resources, such as:
Employees opting in to follow-up communications with the nonprofit
Traffic from the corporate portal to the nonprofit's planned giving landing page
Synchronization rates in the latest data append cycle
Long-Term Metrics
Long-term metrics evaluate high-level strategic outcomes, overall corporate cultural impact, and formal gift commitments, such as:
Formal legacy commitments recorded
Shifts in corporate cultural impact scores on annual employee surveys
Growth in sustained employee engagement metrics across all corporate citizenship initiatives
Set targets for each tier during Phase 1 so results read as a shared scorecard. Review the short-term numbers monthly and send a joint report each quarter.
Final Thoughts
Corporate partners and nonprofits already share employees' time, trust, and payroll relationships, and legacy giving extends that relationship into the future.
Choose one business unit, agree on the Step 2 starter kit, and set a date for the first joint review.
Taking these initial steps transforms everyday workplace support into a lasting community legacy for years to come.